NEW BUILD | AMERICA’S GENERATION GAP
Can nuclear fill the generation gap?
The nuclear industry has work to do if it wants to be a leader among the firm, dispatchable power sources that the Trump administration favours in its new Act.
ENERGY SECURITY WAS THE SUBJECT of the first Executive Order (EO) issued by US president Donald Trump on 20 January 2025 – the same day he was inaugurated. On 14 February, he issued a second energy EO that required immediate production of a National Energy Dominance Strategy. April saw three further EOs in the energy sector; on reinvigorating the coal industry, limiting the power of states over energy policy; and making the electricity grid stronger and more reliable. A month later, presidential attention was on the US nuclear industry, and four EOs covered new reactor designs, reforming the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, reforming reactor testing, and reinvigorating the nuclear industrial base. Trump is not the first president to focus on the energy
sector, and especially the electricity sector. The reason is the fear of a power shortfall, combined, in recent years, with growing concerns over reliability. In 2024, the USA had nearly 1.3 TW of electricity
generating capacity, but it is estimated that on current demand and supply trajectories, the USA will have a 100 GW capacity shortfall by the mid-2030s, as the building of generating capacity lags behind fast-growing demand. Although electrification of industry and transport plays its part in demand growth, by far the biggest issue is a huge increase in demand from data centres. The investment being made in data centres is illustrated by the US state of Virginia, which has been a major area of data centre construction. The world’s largest data centre operator,
Amazon Web Services (AWS) invested $51.9bn in data centres in Virginia in the 10 years to 2021. In January 2025 it announced plans to invest a further $35bn in new fleets of data centres in the state by 2040, although in July it responded to local objections by cancelling one of three ‘campuses’. But although Virginia was an early leader in hosting
data centres – and sometimes dubbed ‘data centre alley’ – many other jurisdictions are catching up. In June alone, immediately before its retrenchment in Virginia, AWS announced plans for a $20bn investment in Pennsylvania and a $10bn investment in North Carolina. Derek Coleman is a senior manager in Baringa’s US
Energy & Power Markets Advisory business. Coleman acknowledged there was a question about “whether the expected load growth going to show up” but he noted that although it was partly driven by electrification of industry, the biggest growth by far is new data centres. He discussed the uncertainties over that expansion and
why investment in generating capacity for data centres will continue, despite those uncertainties. He said, “Data centres will be the largest load, but the projection that also has the most question marks. The hyperscaler businesses [ie AWS, Google etc], have shown they are in an arms race. They are looking for growth at all costs.” They are spending many billions on data centres for AI because, “If the [AI] boom is delivered as predicted, no-one wants to have missed out – that will cost real dollars.” As a result, “they are willing to
Above: The use of AI applications like Siri is driving rapid growth in energy demand for data centres Source: Apple 38 | November 2025 |
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